Emilie Richards - No River Too Wide

Harmony knew that most of the time she wasn’t that way. She knew from living with her father just how damaging revenge was to the soul. She had witnessed demonstrations again and again, and each time she’d vowed never to be like him.

Sadly, though, in one way they were alike, because there was one person she would never be able to forgive and didn’t even want to try. She was grateful beyond measure that her mother had not died in the explosion that had leveled her childhood house, but a part of her was sorry her father hadn’t been locked inside and unable to escape.

Had he been, she and her mother could finally stop living in fear.

More laughter erupted from the living room, and she knew she had to stiffen her backbone and start a discussion about the future. She gripped the mug handle. Then she turned the corner of her tiny kitchenette and stood in the wide doorway as her mother whisked a blanket from her face and cried “Peekaboo!”

Janine was so thin. That was the first thing Harmony had noticed, followed by shock at how old she looked. She was only forty-five, but she looked at least ten years older, her skin sallow, her hair salted with gray and pulled back in an unflattering low ponytail. She walked like someone in pain, each foot placed carefully in front of the other, as if she wasn’t sure the ground wouldn’t rise to swallow it. Now she was smiling at her granddaughter, but even that smile seemed tentative, as if admitting she was happy might bring down disaster on all of them.

Janine looked up and saw her. “Need help?”

“No, you take this one. I’ll get mine.”

“Lottie’s okay in the bouncer while we drink it?”

“She’ll let us know if she’s not.” Harmony went back for the second cup, then joined her mother on the sofa. Before she sat back, she sprinkled Cheerios on the bouncer tray so Lottie could practice feeding herself.

“Just the way I like it,” Janine said, joining her against the cushions and turning so she could eye her daughter. “You didn’t forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, Mom. I missed you so much.”

“I thought about you every day, but I...” Janine sipped a little tea before she finished. “The only thing I could be proud of was helping you get away.”

“Please tell me what happened. You said you were planning to leave yourself, only not so soon?”

Janine sipped and didn’t answer. Harmony hoped she was figuring out how to tell her story.

Finally she put the mug down on a side table. “I wanted to leave for years. Now it seems like forever, only that’s not true. There was a time...”

“When you...loved him?” Harmony had trouble getting the words out.

“I did. Even despite, well, everything.”

Harmony waited for her to go on, but Janine changed tack. “Then a time came when I knew if I stayed, he...” She shrugged.

“He would kill you.” It wasn’t a question.

Janine gave a short nod. “But it wasn’t just that. I realized I was shrinking. Literally. Because I was always hunched over, trying to protect myself. In other ways, too. Nobody knew me anymore. After you left, for a while your father got more and more possessive and paranoid.”

“I didn’t know he could get more of either.”

“It seemed to multiply every week. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without him, not pick up a library book or a quart of milk. My set of car keys went missing one day, and I never saw them again. And even leaving the house with him was rare. Strangers looked right through me when I did, like I wasn’t there.”

Harmony’s throat was raspy from unshed tears. “Nobody who ever really knew you would have looked through you.”

“I’m afraid your father made sure nobody had that chance.”

“You said you had to have a plan?”

“Women like me are most likely to die after they try to leave the men who abuse them.”

“I know it’s not perfect, but wouldn’t the police have protected you?”

Janine gave one emphatic shake of her head.

Harmony didn’t know why she’d asked. She’d seen too many stories herself about abused women who had been killed on the way to the courthouse to get restraining orders, or even inside the courthouse itself.

Janine said the rest in a rush, with more energy than she’d shown to this point. “One day I realized I could barely get out of bed in the mornings, that even being afraid of what he might do if the house wasn’t clean enough or the dinner perfect enough didn’t motivate me anymore. I knew I had to do something or else. The agency was having its New Year’s open house, and it was one of the few things your father still expected me to attend. It would have looked bad for him if I didn’t go. I met a woman there. She...she suspected. She told me to call her the first moment I could.”

“And she helped?”

“She knew how.” Janine didn’t go on.

“She’d done this before?”

“It took a while...to trust her. You can understand. I was putting my life in her hands. We decided on steps to follow. I was supposed to obey your father’s orders and act like whatever he told me was just meant to protect me from a cold, cruel world. To pretend I didn’t want to go out, that I was afraid of my own shadow, that I needed his guidance. Little by little.”

Harmony tried to remember how her mother had behaved when she was still living at home. Janine had made a point of not arguing with Rex, true, but sometimes she had found clever ways around his edicts. And despite everything she had still smiled, still laughed, still shown a certain joy in living that he hadn’t been able to extinguish.

There had been moments, days, even weeks, when their lives hadn’t seemed that much different from those of other families. Janine had known how to diffuse her father’s anger. Or make herself the brunt of it. But she had been actively involved in life. The spark inside her had never been extinguished.

“Did he go for it?” Harmony asked.

“It seemed to be working. He was still violent, erratic, but after a while he...well, he was different. I made mistakes and he didn’t always notice. At first I thought he believed I’d changed, that I had finally become the wife he wanted, and he was cutting me some slack. Then I realized he just didn’t seem to care that much. I wondered if he had figured out my acceptance of our life together was a lie, and he was just waiting for me to prove it.”

“Do you still think he knew?”

“No, I don’t.” Janine bit her lip. “Because if he had figured out I was going to leave him...” She didn’t have to finish.

“Then what? Frustrations at work, maybe? Something else going on?”

Janine turned both palms up, as if to say Who knows?

Harmony thought this replay of the past had gone as far as it could. What her father felt about anything, or what had gone on in his life outside the home, was of no interest to her. Rex Stoddard might think he was the center of the universe, but that wasn’t a universe she wanted to inhabit again. She changed direction. “Before, when we were outside, you said he didn’t come home the night of the fire. But you don’t know where he was?”

“It had happened before, some kind of game he played for years, leaving town without notice. He had all kinds of ways of checking on me while he was gone. Sometimes he would line up repair men to conduct roof inspections or clean out our septic tank. Then they were required to report what they found by phone immediately. The first question Rex always asked was ‘And my wife was there to show you around?’ I heard their answers, so I knew.”

“I never realized.”

“Sometimes he was watching the house, testing me. Sometimes he was really out of town, but he didn’t tell me ahead of time in case I used the opportunity to leave. This time I don’t know what happened. But I knew I might not get a chance like it again. And even if I wasn’t prepared completely?” She swallowed hard, audibly, as if the fear was still there waiting to choke her. “I was ready enough,” she finished.